Animalistic
Animalistic is the fifth studio album recorded by American singer Rachel Wood. The album was made available on July 12, 2018, through Interscope Records. The singer began recording material for Animalistic in October 2017, eventually continuing into March of the following year. On numerous occasions, Woods said that she wanted this album to be a follow up to Revolution. Upon its release, Animalistic received mixed reviews from music critics, who felt the album was too generic, and lacked cohesion, and were also ambivalent towards its dated production. The record debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 167,000 copies. "Mad Love" was released as the lead single from Animalistic on May 26, 2018. However, several songs were released in each week that passed until the album's release, which made things confused to the fans. Background After spending some time resting and with her family, because of her collapse upon the release of Lethal Poison, ''Woods started working a new album. She recruited producers and set a goal to create a "Revolution 2.0", which meant she had in mind some very commercial uptempo songs, with a more urban feel to it. Woods received a demo of "Mad Love" at the early stages of recording, and set the sound of the album based on that song. However, in 2018 producer Ian Kirkpatrick joined the production and started work on some pop oriented tracks and the album direction started to change. As the release date was approaching, Woods decided that she needed more urban songs, stating once again that she wanted to make a new Revolution. In the end, Animalistic turned out to be a mix of pop and urban songs. Release The album was released on July 12, after being promoted with a few performances and five singles. It was released on the same day worldwide and received a few performances upon its release. Title and artwork Woods decided to go with a jungle theme for this album, to reflect the uptempo songs, so she decided to call it Animalistic. The album cover features the singer in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by lions, in front of an altar. During the entire era Woods opted to wear wild costumes and hair. Singles On May 20, the music video for "Mad Love" was premiered during the Billboard Music Awards 2018. It took the fans by surprise, since there was no rumor that Woods was making a comeback at that moment. The song peaked at number 8 in the US Billboard Hot 100, and was aiming to go even higher, but it divided attention with the follow up singles. "Ain't Gonna Sleep Tonight" was released on May 31, along with its music video and it features Krista. Both the song and the video were praised by fans and critics, who said the song was an improvement coming from "Mad Love", and Woods and Krista had a lot of chemistry. The song peaked at number 12 in the US Billboard Hot 100. "Girls" was released as the third single from the album on June 8. It features Christine Harding, Natasha Lewis and Sadie Harris, and was well received by fans and critics as well. It generated some buzz, as Lewis and Harding were absent from the media for some time. It peaked at number 18 in the US Billboard Hot 100, but reached the top 10 in Canada, Australia and the UK. "Faded Love" was released on June 15 as the fourth single from the album. It was the only mid tempo song released before the album, and it was praised by critics who said it's production was flawless and on point. However, due to the success of the three previous songs, that were already competing on streaming services and on iTunes, "Faded Love" peaked at number 34 in the US Billboard Hot 100. On June 22, "Me So Bad" was released along with its music video as the fifth single from the album, and the last one to precede it. The song was received to negative reviews from critics, who called it messy, because of the unnecessary features, and deemed its production as poor. The songs peaked at number 68 in the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming one of Woods lowest charting singles. "Feel Nothing" was released as the sixth and final single on September 5. It was also used to promote the Animalistic World Tour that was coming. The song peaked at number 26 in the US Billboard Hot 100, benefiting a little from the previous singles fading out on charts. Critical reception ''Animalistic ''received generally mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of hundred to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 56, based on twenty-one reviews. Margaret Wappler of the ''Los Angeles Times said that Woods' "wild and free" persona is the album's "most successful vein". Pete Paphides of The Times gave the album four out of five stars and found it sounding very confident. Kitty Empire, writing in The Observer, found it to be "very strong, but only in parts". Alexis Petridis, writing in The Guardian, commented that Animalistic is an "occasionally fun and sassy, occasionally teeth-gritting and stupid album." It was criticized as an attempt to take advantage of Revolution popularity and imitate the sound and image of it, not bringing anything new to the table. Andy Gill of The Independent said that, apart from its basic R&B attempts, the album imitates Revolution's "electro-R&B schtick" to disguise Woods' "lack of any original approach." Jon Pareles, writing in The New York Times, remarked that its musical direction "makes her sound as peer-pressured as a pop singer can be." Omar Kholeif of PopMatters said that the album is not good because of "it's dated and underproduced songs", while The A.V. Club's Genevieve Koski wrote that the album sounds "muddled" because of its lack of direction between pop and r&b or a good mix of both. Commercial performance Unlike Woods' previous studio albums, Animalistic had trouble maintaining commercial success in the international markets. On the week ending July 12, 2018, the album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 167,000 copies. However, those first-week sales were comparatively less than those of Woods' previous studio album Lethal Poison (2017), which peaked at number one with 572,000 copies sold. The following week the album fell to number nine with sales of 66,388 copies. As of November 2018, the album has sold 730,000 equivalent copies in the United States, being certified by RIAA as Gold. Track listing